


mourning

by allechant



Category: Shall We Date?: Obey Me!
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:54:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26008348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allechant/pseuds/allechant
Summary: each and every individual has their own way of coping with loss.
Relationships: Belphegor (Shall We Date?: Obey Me!)/Reader
Comments: 2
Kudos: 58





	mourning

Your ghost clings to him, the shadow of a presence once full of life, full of warmth.

It’s in the years that pass, a whisper fading in and out of twilight; the decades that blend into centuries and millennia. Time and time again he searches for you, high and low, in every nook and cranny of the dark world that stretches before him. Time and time again, he finds nothing.

Love is a curse. It lingers in the recesses of a heart once thought to be numb. It brings colour to your cheeks, gives life to your form. It shapes his dreams. At night he gasps awake to the promise of your voice, laughter floating in through the hazy window of longing. He swears he sees the glimmer of your eyes, smiling at him before he blinks and you disappear, mist curling away from his fingertips.

He wonders if it’s selfish to hope that you sinned. Sinned enough to fall into the embrace of the world so familiar to you – sinned enough that if he could simply bring himself to search for you, he might, _just might_ , see you again. It’s not unlike a demon to condemn one to hell for the sake of their pleasure, but he thinks to himself that this isn’t _pleasure_ , it’s penance.

Of course, he keeps his thoughts to himself, lingering on the remnants of a past long gone. He remembers everything with the vivid clarity of sunshine, how you first turned to him with doubt in your eyes, the shimmer of suspicion twisting your mouth; how one day unease gave way to familiarity and comfort and you looked at him with the sheer gossamer of happiness painting your smile, wariness long forgotten as you picked beneath his skin, drawing out who he truly was.

It had been so long since he last hated a human. Since he last hated you.

Every year he visits your grave. Sometimes it’s on the day you first met; when your curiosity led you up to the attic. Sometimes it’s on the day you first whispered that you forgave him, and his heart thrummed in his chest, struggling in the clutches of some emotion he couldn’t identify.

Once in a while, he visits on the anniversary of your death. On those days, he brings lilies.

You liked white lilies. They were your favourite flower. Why, frankly, he never knew. But what he _did_ know was that they made you happy, and as he left the bouquets next to a tombstone that grew increasingly weathered with age, he wondered if you knew how cherished you were, buried six feet beneath the ground.

Someday, your tombstone would be gone. Your bones had long withered into dust, your mortal remains feeding the plants and the trees, returning to the cycle of life. Time was a finite and precious thing to those who feared the unchanging tempo of death, and he couldn't understand.

You did not fear death. Towards the end of your life, you reached forward and welcomed death like an old friend, and he wondered whether it was foolish to be angry at something he couldn’t control. He held dominion over apathy and lethargy, over the bitter taste of unfulfillment, but no matter how similar his sin was to the crawl of life’s end, he could not stave off the inevitable.

The only thing he had left of you was his memory, and even that would someday be gone. He wondered if you would slip away like water running through his fingers, leaving him desperate, trying to reach for things he could not own – he wondered whether you would just leave, quiet and unassuming, and he’d simply wake up with an unexplainable void in his mind, the outline of a phantom that had long overstayed its welcome.

He didn’t mind keeping you alive. A study in irony perhaps, when once upon a time he would have done anything to be able to wrap his fingers around your throat, choke the life out of you in front of Lucifer and Diavolo, show them how little their pet was worth in the eyes of hell.

But instead, you lived on within him, in his dreams, in his shadow. Ridiculous, he thinks, how the fleeting touch of a mortal life had imprinted itself upon his eternity. How he still reached towards your cup when he poured a drink in the kitchen. How Mammon would tell a joke and pause, expecting a laugh that never came. How he and his brothers still acted like your room was _yours_ , private and untouchable. A shrine to commemorate a moment of weakness.

If he thinks too much about you, warmth stings his eyes and he blinks, warning off the tears with a scowl and a muttered curse – an oath that carries no heat.

Satan once told him that some human cultures believed in the idea of reincarnation. That souls could and would come back, though not always in the form one might expect. _Like ghosts?_

 _No, not ghosts_ , his brother answered. _Something else. Something other._

He never quite understood what Satan meant by that, and even now he didn’t know. Though it was tempting to consider the possibility that you might not be fully gone, he knew better than to hope – cases like his sister were rare. Lilith only reincarnated due to Diavolo’s interference; without magic, death was absolute and final. An endpoint from which there was no return.

Today, he visited your grave. It had been centuries since your death, and your tombstone was long gone, your final earthly monument having crumbled into nothingness. The cemetery had been knocked down, replaced by a park. A tree towered over him, and he wondered if part of your consciousness could be found within it, lingering in the roots, in the rough wooden bark.

A memory flitted through his mind, not as crisp as it once was, but he remembered enough to make out the features of your face, eyes crinkled in mirth, lips parted in a sigh. Your hand and his intertwined as you danced through the cemetery, surprisingly at ease among the dead.

 _My parents are buried here_ , you told him, matter-of-fact; you could have been talking about the weather. _I think when I die, I’d want to be placed in this cemetery too. It’s nice, isn’t it?_

_Nice? What do you mean?_

_Well, there are flowers everywhere. And plants. Maybe some would find it overgrown, but_ , you shrugged, _I think there’s beauty to the wilderness. I wouldn’t have it any other way_.

On the day you passed, he saw to it that your wish was fulfilled, and he stood over your open grave, watching as your coffin was lowered into the ground. He looked at the silent statues all around him, the angels of death guarding the tombs of the deceased. He looked at the plants and flowers that swayed gently in the breeze; he looked at the sky, grey with mourning.

There was nowhere better for you than here, he decided. Where the solemnity of farewell was interspersed with promises of a better beginning. Here, it didn’t feel so... _final_. As though you might just burst out of the ground, bell-like laugh chiming, your feet carrying you light and swift back into his arms.

Part of him waited. Part of him hoped. It never happened, but still, he continued to come to you. There was something comforting about being in your presence, even if you weren’t truly there anymore.

He placed the lilies at the foot of the tree and stood back, staring up at its graceful branches. Sunlight filtered through the canopy, dappling the ground, and he closed his eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun against his skin. The sun of the human world was undeniably different from what they experienced in the Devildom, though he wondered how much of that difference could be attributed to memories of his time spent with you.

Something brushed against him, and his eyes flicked open, searching. It was a gentle, delicate touch, and when he glanced down he noticed a pale butterfly on his shoulder, its wings trembling. He watched it curiously, and its wings flapped once, twice before it took off, soaring into the cloudless blue sky.

His heart seemed to rise along with the butterfly, some mysterious weight finally falling from his shoulders. He smiled. Perhaps today would be a good day.

**Author's Note:**

> in my culture, during the seventh lunar month the spirits of our ancestors will come back as hungry ghosts to visit their families. sometimes, they appear in the form of insects like moths and butterflies.
> 
> talk to me on [twitter](https://mobile.twitter.com/dontenchantme)


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